101 Franklin Street

1948 city office building, under conversion to residences by Steven Harris Architects.

101 Franklin Street, 10013

ALSO KNOWN AS 250 Church Street

101 Franklin Street is a city office building of 1948 being converted to residences by Steven Harris Architects, with Hill West as architect of record. It runs the depth of the block between Franklin and Leonard Streets and is addressed on Church Street as well, which is why it carries more than one number.

It housed the Human Resources Administration and the Department of Social Services until 2017 and then stood empty. The conversion keeps the existing superstructure and adds floors on top of it rather than replacing the frame.

The conversion completes in 2028. Until then the block carries a sidewalk shed and a fenced perimeter along the whole frontage, and access to the buildings either side runs around it.

An office frame of this date was drawn for deep floor plates, a central core and a column grid set for open tenancy, and none of those were drawn for apartments. Daylight has to reach rooms across a depth that offices solved with artificial light, so the plan is governed by how far a residence can sit from a window rather than by how the floor divides.

The added floors sit on the old structure, which means the loads they impose were not in the 1948 calculation and the transfer is the engineering of the project. What that decides inside is where columns land on the upper floors, and they will not land where the floors below them suggest.

Steven Harris has drawn a masonry elevation rather than a glass one, which on this block is the difference between a conversion that reads as part of Tribeca and one that reads as an office building with new windows.

Within walking distance

Building facts

New York City Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output, version 26v1. Tax lot 1001770002.